At Chartres Cathedral, for the first time in medieval art, the lowest register of stained-glass windows depicts working artisans and merchants instead of noble and clerical donors. Jane Welch Williams challenges the prevailing view that pious town tradesmen donated these windows. In Bread, Wine, and Money, she uncovers a deep antagonism between the trades and the cathedral clergy in Chartres; the windows, she argues, portray not town tradesmen but trusted individuals that the fearful clergy had taken into the cloister as their own serfs. Williams weaves a tight net of historical circumstances, iconographic traditions, exegetical implications, political motivations, and liturgical functions to explain the imagery in the windows of the trades. Her account of changing social relationships in thirteenth-century Chartres focuses on the bakers, tavern keepers, and money changers whose bread, wine, and money were used as means of exchange, tithing, and offering throughout medieval society. Drawing on a wide variety of original documents and scholarly work, this book makes important new contributions to our knowledge of one of the great monuments of Western culture.

"A startling new philosophy and practical guide to getting the most out of your money-and out of life-for those who value memorable experiences as much as their earnings"--

Award-winning journalist Simran Sethi explores the history and cultural importance of our most beloved tastes, paying homage to the ingredients that give us daily pleasure, while providing a thoughtful wake-up call to the homogenization that is threatening the diversity of our food supply. Food is one of the greatest pleasures of human life. Our response to sweet, salty, bitter, or sour is deeply personal, combining our individual biological characteristics, personal preferences, and emotional connections. Bread, Wine, Chocolate illuminates not only what it means to recognize the importance of the foods we love, but also what it means to lose them. Award-winning journalist Simran Sethi reveals how the foods we enjoy are endangered by genetic erosion—a slow and steady loss of diversity in what we grow and eat. In America today, food often looks and tastes the same, whether at a San Francisco farmers market or at a Midwestern potluck. Shockingly, 95% of the world’s calories now come from only thirty species. Though supermarkets seem to be stocked with endless options, the differences between products are superficial, primarily in flavor and brand. Sethi draws on interviews with scientists, farmers, chefs, vintners, beer brewers, coffee roasters and others with firsthand knowledge of our food to reveal the multiple and interconnected reasons for this loss, and its consequences for our health, traditions, and culture. She travels to Ethiopian coffee forests, British yeast culture labs, and Ecuadoran cocoa plantations collecting fascinating stories that will inspire readers to eat more consciously and purposefully, better understand familiar and new foods, and learn what it takes to save the tastes that connect us with the world around us.

The publication of the King James version of the Bible, translated between 1603 and 1611, coincided with an extraordinary flowering of English literature and is universally acknowledged as the greatest influence on English-language literature in history. Now, world-class literary writers introduce the book of the King James Bible in a series of beautifully designed, small-format volumes. The introducers' passionate, provocative, and personal engagements with the spirituality and the language of the text make the Bible come alive as a stunning work of literature and remind us of its overwhelming contemporary relevance.

Set and written in Fascist Italy, this book exposes that regime's use of brute force for the body and lies for the mind. Through the story of the once exiled Pietro Spina, Italy comes alive with priests and peasants, students and revolutionaries, all on the brink of war.

This is a basic “how-to” book, primarily for presiders, but also helpful for lay readers in the parish. The book “walks through” the BAS Eucharist, discussing the various activities and how they might be most effectively accomplished. Helpful information on history, shape, and structure for the various parts of the liturgy is provided, as well as practical details to aid parish communities in preparing for the Sunday liturgy week by week.

Can eucharistic ministers clean the vessels after communion? What does the deacon do at Mass? How do we use the entrance and communion antiphons? Where do the servers sit? Is the gospel book carried out at the end of Mass? How do we choose the eucharistic prayer? The and more questions--45 in all--that priests, liturgists, music directors, liturgy committees, ministry coordinators and diocesan liturgy offices frequently ask about the Mass are answered here with legal expertise and pastoral sensitivity. Questions are grouped into subject topics including introductory rites, liturgy of the word, liturgy of the eucharist, concluding rites, ministers, weekdays and miscellaneous issues.